CA Technologies Announces “Day One” Support for IBM z14

CA Technologies has announced support for IBM’s z14 in key CA mainframe solutions. According to the vendor, its solutions leverage the new z14 platform "to decrease the threat surface associated with data breaches where there is degradation of performance associated with increased encryption needs."

With new regulations coming into play, such as the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement and European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that focus on data privacy it is necessary for organizations to be able to find, classify, and protect critical data. IBM and CA collectively provide unified enterprise security that helps increase an organization’s compliance structure across new and existing mainframes, the companies say. To this end, CA Data Content Discovery (CA DCD) supports and complements the new z14’s pervasive encryption capability by identifying where sensitive data is stored and classifying that data to be more selective on how and who can access which data. And, as data is shared and exchanged with third parties, CA DCD adds controls for sensitive data-in-motion.

In addition, CA says, customers are increasingly adopting blockchain to transform many industries with new distributed business models. With security characteristics, such as hardware-attached FIPS 140-2 level 4 encryption or tamper proof secure containers, and its scalability requirements, the mainframe is being used by organizations to scale from their distributed ledger proof-of-concept to production-grade implementations.

According to Ashok Reddy, general manager, Mainframe, CA Technologies, when the z14 is combined with CA’s standards-based approach to blockchain services, it offers usability, speed, data-centric security and enterprise scale. This is important for blockchain because ultimately it is an internet of trust consisting of a set of applications that support digital identity management relating to personally identifiable information, big data, and the IoT, explained Reddy. CA works with financial services, insurance and retail customers and is engaged in the Hyperledger project to deliver faster time to market and increased operational management of Blockchain implementations.

With more than 70% of corporate data on mainframes, the IBM z14 is also the platform of choice for real-time machine learning and AI, says CA. And, when combined with CA’s predictive intelligent automation services, IBM’s z14 will enable customers to operate their mission-critical services to consistently meet or exceed SLA requirements.